O60s beaten by England in Cardiff!

The Wales Veterans' Football Association welcomed an England o60s squad to Ocean Park on 21st February to face a Wales o60s squad in the first of their pre-four nations warm up games. Manager Jon Parkinson made some fundamental changes to the starting 11 and welcomed some debutants to the squad.

In a very blustery first-half the hosts dominated both territory and possession, but with the wind behind them, at times fell into the trap of playing the ball too long with the wind advantage. Despite that, numerous chances were created but unfortunately not taken, this allowed England to grow in confidence and their central midfield player and MoM, ‘Tommo’ in particular started to shine. A goal-mouth scramble from England’s only corner of the first half resulted in them going into the interval 1-0 up, completely against the run off play.

Lots more changes from the Wales manager into the second half and a slight change of shape allowed Wayne Matthews (Wales MOM) to get on the ball and Wales continued to be dominant in possession despite playing against the wind. Unfortunately, Wales couldn’t find the breakthrough and they certainly have things to work on in the final third, in the upcoming warm up matches. In a similar manner to the 45 minutes, England grew into the half and two breakaway goals gave them a clinical 3-0 victory.

Although Wales suffered a defeat, the aim was to try a variety of different formations, combinations and to experiment with in-game management. To that end it was successful fixture and there were several good performances, including from the debutants, which proved their call ups were more than merited.